Modern: Quest for the Holy Soul

It’s Tuesday O’Clock! Time for a deck tech!

One of my favorite things about the Modern format as a whole is the amount of creativity that can be found in it. Many people claim that Modern is a fixed format where there is no innovation anymore, and I couldn’t find that to be further from the truth. One great example of this creativity is the deck that I am going to show you today. This deck was created by the brilliant mind of /u/ProfessorTraft on Reddit and is like the strange love child between Affinity and Soul Sisters. It can gain an obscene amount of life or blow up the world as early as turn 2, and it’s great at doing both.

The deck, aptly named as Quest for the Holy Soul aims to flood the board with creatures in order to activate a Quest for the Holy Relic and search up an Argentum Armor by turn 2 and start blowing up their permanents. If for some reason, you aren’t able to search for any busted equipment by turn 2 you still have the fallback plan of gaining a ton of life and letting your Serra Ascendant finish off the opponent. With such a high density of cheap creatures, it is very easy to flood the board and finish your opponent off before they even know what is happening.

For this deck tech, I was able to ask questions about the deck from the creator himself. He was kind enough to give me detailed answers on each of my questions and provide insight into the deck. Here is what he said:

1. What are the Best Matchups for the Deck?

It’s fantastic against Tron because you set-up faster than them on the quest plan then proceed to blow up their lands. Even if they natural Tron, the deck can consistently put out Argentum armor T3-4, and even with bad draws, GQs can delay them even more. The sideboard also heavily favors going, against burn and Jeskai/Grixis control variants that have a high quantity of spot removal because none of the creatures are actual threats, and the sideboard options have a lot of protection clauses which stacks well with the swords (Where you can activate a 5 counter quest to equip in response). It’s safe to say this deck has a good chance against the current tier 1 options in the metagame because it’s developed for them.

2. What are the Worst Matchups for the Deck?

Uninteractive combo decks like Ad Nauseam and Living End, especially the new Blue variant with counterspells are quite bad. Being monowhite, the deck has no real card advantage engines aside from the 2 swords which rely on you having creatures to hold it, AND it needs the attacks to connect. There’s no real plan to recover from a wrath in the main board, and even in the sideboard, Dusk//Dawn 4+5cmc isn’t something the deck hits very often because the deck is meant to function at 1-3 lands with a high creature count. GBx and decks that play a high amount of discard also shuts down our bigger plays because we need a good amount of creatures to cast to trigger quest/lifegain. So while we have good matchups in Tier 1, we trade it off with having bad matchups in tier 2, although this downfall can be improved if you play Leyline of Sanctity in the side.

3. Any Tips you’d like to give New Players to the Deck?

The deck actually takes a bit of practice to know the correct plays. While decks like 8-whack and Affinity will almost surely ask you to play down your hand, this deck needs you to think ahead even when you can play all the cards in your hand. While you could very well play T1 quest and a 0 CMC creatures to start building quest counters, it may be better to hold on to it especially if you have a Soul Sister in hand. It isn’t necessary to try and get the quest counters ASAP, especially when plan B of the deck is to grow a Pridemate/ Serra ascendant. Of course, if you can T3 Serra Ascendant with an Argentum Armor, that will be correct 99.9% of the time. The sequencing that spans 2-3 turns ahead (As compared to sequencing within a turn like 8-whack and Affinity) may feel counter-intuitive during some match-ups, so do take time to consider the possible plays.

Thank you ProfessorTraft for answering my questions about the deck in such detail. Quest for the Holy Soul is a unique take on Modern and is a great way to answer many of the top decks in the format right now. This deck packs a ton of synergy for a fairly low price and gives a very fun and fast aggro-combo deck that can take your local LGS by storm when they are least expecting it.